Twilight’s dark night

Thank you for your messages. My inbox ranged from the crazy to the curious - Twi-Hards anxious about whether or not Kristen Stewart cheated on Robert Pattinson and Twi-Hard watchers eager to be amused by their total meltdown. Like I said earlier in the open, “Robsten Is Unbroken” was the #6 trending topic worldwide when I woke up this morning around 4am PT. Here’s one of my favourite tweets from the darkest night in Twilight history(so far):

RT @victoria1985: Us all being here for each other right now makes this a million times easier to get through. I love you all.

This situation is fascinating on so many levels. From a pop culture perspective, no doubt, how these two navigate the scandal will certainly be added to the Faculty Of Celebrity Studies syllabus. But it’s also the behaviour of some of their most ardent supporters. Many of them, even the saner (ish) ones did not sleep. Have you ever asked yourself how someone, perhaps a lover/spouse could not have seen the signs? There are “Robsten” fans today who insist that the images have been photoshopped, and have even gone so far as to create false reports that Rupert Sanders’s wife called into a radio station to deny the allegations despite the fact that the radio station has denied that any of that actually happened! That whole trail apparently started because someone posted it on IMDB. These are the lengths people will go to to cling to what they need to believe. About people they don’t know! In that respect, it’s not hard to imagine how a spouse might willfully ignore when he/she is being betrayed.

So is it true?

YES.

Kristen Stewart was photographed making out with Rupert Sanders, who directed her in Snow White And The Huntsman, last week. US Weekly has the photos. You’ve likely seen the cover. The inside shots show the two of them in car. There’s no doubt what they’re up to. There’s also a shot of them embracing each other, Sanders’s lips on Stewart’s shoulder. This is perhaps the most incriminating photo. It suggests an intimacy that’s much too familiar to be explained away as platonic friendship. For all the effort she and Pattinson put into jumping into garbage bins whenever the paps are around, having your director go down on you in the car (it looks like this in one of the pictures) out in the open is f-cking moronic.

Sanders is married to Liberty Ross who played Snow White’s mother in his film. They have two children. So...

Kristen Stewart and LeAnn Rimes now have something in common.

Anyway, here’s how it all went down:

A very fortunate paparazzo jackpotted the photos last week. Us Weekly secured them for an exclusive and let Stewart’s rep know in advance on Monday, before the magazine closed, that they would be running the story. Stewart’s team had a one day lead to make their preparations which also gave Stewart the opportunity to let Sanders know herself and of course her boyfriend Robert Pattinson. If that’s any consolation, Twi-Hards, he heard it from her and not from the internet.

Stewart is not denying the story. If there were no photos, the strategy might be different. But it’s hard to argue with those shots. Instead then, she and her team have decided to acknowledge her mistake, giving up source quotes through PEOPLE and Gossip Cop, mouthpiece outlets for publicists:

"Kristen is absolutely devastated. It was a mistake and a complete lapse in judgment. She wasn't having an affair with Rupert. It was just a fleeting moment that shouldn't have happened. She never meant to hurt anyone. She's a good person who just made a bad choice."

The play here then seems to be to own up to the error but also suggest that it was a one-time stray, a “fleeting moment” in a parked car in broad daylight and not some regular f-cking in a hotel room under a code name. The honest move is a good one. Most of celebrities, as we’ve seen, would have denied it. John Travolta keeps denying it, even when there’s practically a dick in his mouth.

The other side of her game plan of course is to call for sympathy while admitting she screwed up. “Kristen is absolutely devastated” is a direct appeal to her fanbase, her Twi-Hards: she’s crying herself to sleep and you have to forgive her!

Fine. But who’s consoling Mrs Sanders?

Mrs Sanders, aka Liberty Ross, tweeted a few cryptic messages before deleting her Twitter account yesterday but.... not before posting this photo on Instagram:

Watch. Knowing how mental they can be, Liberty Ross will probably have to go into hiding now because somehow those Twi-Hards, they’ll turn her into a villain.

Let’s agree that the biggest pig out of all of this is Rupert Sanders. The problem is that the biggest star here is Kristen Stewart. Living with shame is terrible. This is Kristen Stewart’s reality now. She did a really, really dumb thing. Partly out of immaturity, perhaps some of it out of confusion, and definitely a lot of selfishness. She indulged. She did not think of others. She acted for herself. So on top of all the sh-t they’re saying about her, she also just became such a cliché, and Kristen Stewart was supposed to be the un-cliche.

Kristen Stewart is 22. She’s a Hollywood actress. She grew up in the business. She’s dating her big box office co-star. She cheated on him with a married director and may have just wrecked a home in the process.

I dunno, Twi-Hards, I’m pretty sure that’s not an original story.

The thing about celebrity though is that there’s always another narrative. Stewart’s next narrative priority is how she recovers. More on this to come, and whether or not she and Pattinson stay together.